Robert Rodriguez feared letting James Cameron down with Alita: Battle Angel

Taking over someone else's passion project can be a daunting prospect, but that's exactly where Robert Rodriquez found himself. James Cameron had ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL on his back-burner for decades, but when it became clear that he would be spending the majority of his time in the world of Pandora for the numerous AVATAR sequels, Robert Rodriguez was chosen to direct the film. As well as stepping a little outside his comfort zone into the realm of sky-high budgets, Rodriquez told THR during New York Comic-Con that he also had to make sure that James Cameron wouldn't have any regrets about hiring him.

My job was to go make what he created come to life so that he wouldn't have to because he was going to be busy with Avatar, because otherwise, we'd never see this movie. The last thing I wanted was him to watch it and go, ‘Uh, damn it, I knew I should have shot it myself.’ So I wanted him to feel like it was a Jim Cameron movie too.

20th Century Fox recently pushed ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL from December 21, 2018 to February 14, 2019, which will give the visual-effects team even more time to push the effects to the next level. "Even though they've done all those technological breakthroughs, we still have to keep adjusting and breaking the face," Rodriguez said. "Every time they'd come up against a new scene where Rosa [Salazar] is very expressive, she does an expression that's not translating, they got to rebuild the face again and then change all the faces they did before to update them."

When audiences finally do get to see the long-awaited film next year, Robert Rodriguez hopes that they'll spring to see ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL in IMAX 3D. "We shot it in Native 3D. Jim [Cameron] and I had always been big 3D proponents," Rodriguez explained. "And because it's a true vision of the future. I mean, it's really so detailed and seen, heard, larger-than-life. I would want to see a Jim Cameron movie on the big screen. I saw Avatar on a huge IMAX screen and that marked my life."